Website Name

Year Published

Title

URL

Access Date

February 18, 2018

Publisher

A+E Networks

On this day in 1776, Alexander Hamilton receives his commission as captain of a New York artillery company. Throughout the rest of 1776, Captain Hamilton established himself as a great military leader as he directed his artillery company in several battles in and around New York City. In March 1777, Hamilton’s performance came to the attention of General George Washington and he was commissioned lieutenant colonel and personal aide to General Washington in the Continental Army.

After serving under Washington for four years, Hamilton resigned in February 1781 after a dispute with the general, but remained in the army. In July 1781, Hamilton took a position as commander of a regiment of New York troops and served with distinction at the Battle of Yorktown in the fall of that year.

After resigning from the army and working at a law practice, Hamilton was elected to the Continental Congress from New York in 1782, where he quickly became known as a proponent of a stronger national government. In the years to come, Hamilton became well-known for his political philosophy and published several papers with James Madison and John Jay that became known as the Federalist Papers.

Hamilton became the first secretary of the treasury in September 1789 after the election of President George Washington and served in that office until resigning in January 1795. Hamilton then returned to the private sector and a law practice in New York City, but remained a close advisor to President Washington.

In 1800, Hamilton became embroiled in a bitter dispute when he threw his support behind President John Adams’ reelection campaign instead of presidential candidate Aaron Burr’s. After his defeat, Burr ran for governor of New York in 1804; Hamilton again opposed his candidacy. Humiliated, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Alexander Hamilton was shot in the duel and died of his wound the following day, July 12, in New York at the age of 49.

Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!

Also on this day

On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein is born, the son of a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity drastically altered man’s view of the universe, and his work in particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics and, ultimately, the atomic bomb.
After...

John “Jack” Mack, who co-founded what would become one of North America’s largest makers of heavy-duty trucks, is killed when his car collides with a trolley in Pennsylvania on March 14, 1922.
In 1890, Jack Mack went to work for Fallesen & Berry, a carriage and wagon company in Brooklyn, New...

On this day in 1862, at the Battle of New Bern, Union General Ambrose Burnside captures North Carolina’s second largest city and closes another port through which the Confederates could slip supplies.
The capture of New Bern continued Burnside’s success along the Carolina coast. Five weeks earlier, he led an amphibious...

The Congress of People’s Deputies elects General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as the new president of the Soviet Union. While the election was a victory for Gorbachev, it also revealed serious weaknesses in his power base that would eventually lead to the collapse of his presidency in December 1991.Gorbachev’s election in...

On this day in 1950, the Federal Bureau of Investigation institutes the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list in an effort to publicize particularly dangerous fugitives. The creation of the program arose out of a wire service news story in 1949 about the “toughest guys” the FBI wanted to capture. The...

A Polish Airlines flight, on a Soviet-built Ilyushin 62 jet, crashes while attempting to land in Warsaw, killing all 87 people on board, including 22 members of the United States boxing team, on this day in 1980. The flight originated in New York and carried 77 passengers and 10 crew...

Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald–the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy–is found guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict to be televised in U.S. history.On November 24, 1963,...

In the face of widespread questioning of their guilt, British authorities release the so-called “Birmingham Six,” six Irish men who had been sent to prison 16 years earlier for the 1974 terrorist bombings of two Birmingham, England, pubs.On November 21, 1974, two Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs exploded in two...

On this day in 1948, the comedian and actor Billy Crystal, who will become known for his starring roles in such movies as When Harry Met Sally… and City Slickers, is born in Long Beach, California.
Crystal began performing in comedy clubs as a teenager; after graduating from New York University’s...

Sylvia Beach, owner of the Paris-based bookstore Shakespeare and Co., is born in Baltimore. Beach moved to Paris at the age of 14, when her father, a Presbyterian minister, was sent to France. She fell in love with the city. In 1919, she opened her bookstore, Shakespeare and Co., which...

For as long as most people have been buying popular music on records, tapes and compact disks, the records, tapes and disks they’ve bought have carried labels like “Certified Gold!” and “Double Platinum!!” Those labels have been in use since the early days of the rock-and-roll era, when a young...

Max Brand, perhaps the most prolific writer of western stories, publishes his first novel, The Untamed.
Max Brand was one of 21 pen names used by the Seattle-born author Frederick Faust. When he was still a young boy, Faust’s family moved to the San Joaquin Valley of California, where he...

On this day in history, the body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a spot just a few feet away from its original interment site at Arlington National Cemetery. The slain president had been assassinated more than three years earlier, on November 22, 1963.
Although JFK never specified where...

On this day in 1997, President Bill Clinton undergoes surgery to repair the quadriceps tendon of his right knee at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Clinton, an avid golfer, had injured his knee at 1:20 that morning when he slipped down some stairs at Australian professional golfer Greg...

Twenty-four South Vietnamese Air Force planes, led by Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky and supported by U.S. jets, bomb the barracks and depots on Con Co (“Tiger”) Island, 20 miles off the coast of North Vietnam. The next day, 100 U.S. Air Force jets and carrier-based bombers struck the ammunition depot...

At a news conference, President Richard Nixon says there is no prospect for a U.S. troop reduction in the foreseeable future because of the ongoing enemy offensive. Nixon stated that the prospects for withdrawal would hinge on the level of enemy activity, progress in the Paris peace talks, and the...

On this day in 1915, the British ships Kent and Glasgow corner the German light cruiser Dresden in Cumberland Bay, off the coast of Chile. After raising the white flag, the Dresden‘s crew abandoned and scuttled the ship, which sank with its German ensign flying.
Dresden, a 3,600-ton light cruiser, was...

On this day, German troops re-enter Kharkov, the second largest city in the Ukraine, which had changed hands several times in the battle between the USSR and the invading German forces.
Kharkov was a high-priority target for the Germans when they invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, as the city...